Above the court room entrance were the words: "No ants allowed."
My attorney, Sadaya of Sumeria sat at the defense table drinking wine and reading a magazine article called "Existential Woman, the Eternal Search for God's Girlfriend." The assistant prosecuting attorney was his sister Sibyl the Dreadfully Gorgeous. She was polishing her diamond sharp fingernails. The judge was King Nergal.
They pushed me down in a chair and told me to shut the fuck up unless talked to. Then I noticed that the hall cops, the Trinket Rangers were messed up. I know there are about thirty of them, but only six are here. These six are covered in bandages. They have slashed clothing and they are bruised and broken. There must have been a terrible fight.
Nobody bothered making eye contact with me. No big deal. They all wore their regulation sunglasses, or they had black holes where eyes belonged. Sibyl had on her bionic ReZooms; her eyes were revolving like ceiling globes at a disco dance.
Alaster said a prayer:
"Lord of Optometry, we beseech you to take this Potential into your deepest dungeon and torture his soul forever. He slanders your image. He is ruthlessly impure. He is, we are sorry to report, the worse creation you ever cobbled together. What the hell were you thinking, Sir, Almighty One. Now we must clean up Your mess. We will make his trial short. We will declare him guilty. We will complete the live burial. Then we will go to lunch. Amen."
Next they sacrificed a couple virgins, or rather they were supposed to, but there were no virgins left in Sumeria since the Collapse- which for some strange reason made everyone horny.
"Don't we have a goat?"
Namtar was the schools prosecuting attorney. He rose to read the charges against Steven Ishmael:
"These are the charges brought before the judge and a jury of your peers."
Oh yeah, the jury. There wasn't any. Sadaya said it was because they couldn't find anyone low enough on the food chain to be my peer. My fate was up to the judge.
"Driving without a license"How do you plead, Mr Detroit?"
Parking outside the lines
Depositing oil on Sacred property
Failure to pay ticket fines
Unlicensed dromedary
Writing poetry in professional school
Staring at a female in Sumeria without a license.
Visiting the King without permission
Giving the King a migraine headache
Insufficient confessing
Blasphemy
Obscenity
"I'm not guilty, you dumb asshole."
"Excuse me, I'd like a word with my client."
Sadaya bent over and whispered. "You want me to shoot you myself?"
Then he invented morning and lunch and late night snack. On the second day, he invented crab grass. This was more pleasing than slime alone. "Still, he said, it's not quite right"
On the third day, God created tape worms. "Wow," he said, Look, tape worms!"
At the end of day three, God was tired of crab grass, slime, and tape worms. He went to bed slightly depressed.
On the fourth day, God created Prozac. For the next six days he raced tape worms through the slime and laughed and was happy with his creations.
On day eleven, God noticed something bubbling in the slime. "Hey," he said "I didn't make this stuff?!" For the next twenty days, God watched while viruses, germs, parasites, cockroaches, and human males bubbled to the surface of His slime and escaped into the eternal crab grass.
God was stunned. After happy hour at the Universal Joint, he overdosed on Prozac and Old Grouse and, after inventing heavy artillery, began shooting randomly at shadows and illusory invaders.
Two days later, God discovered he had a large penis.
"Holy Tape Worm!
He also had a strange sensation that he called "Need". His Royal Need rose to mysterious and universal proportions and then the big bang happened. The rest is human history, up until the Collapse.
Oh, on day two hundred, God created Monopoly and all has been well ever since.
Two thousand years later, God built himself a house which he called the Universal Joint, and it was good. It had extra rooms so God could invite guests.
On the first day in his new house God created guests, Alex and Andrea Wallace from Tupelo, Mississippi. And God said "I can't understand a damn thing these people are saying."
On the second day, God created Monopoly and made the Wallaces play the stupid game over and over again until Mr. Wallace said "Please, just shoot me."
On the third day, God created the Holy Book of Rules. He gave the book to the Wallaces and said to them. "Go forth with my commandments and procreate." And then Mrs. Wallace said "What does procreate mean? And God drew pictures and made animal sounds.
Mrs. Wallace stood for a long while in silence with a strange look on her face. Then she turned to God.
"You're out of your fucking mind."
On the fourth day, God created pornography. "Hey, said Mr. Wallace, now we're getting somewhere."
On the fifth day, God created a huge sign that said "Home of the Messiah!" "Don't mess with God," he told Mrs. Wallace."
"Get a life, God. Where did you get your license to create? You're fired. I want an attorney. Let me speak to another God."
On the sixth day in his new house, God created migraine headaches, menstrual periods, and ovarian cancer. "You can't vote, either, he told Mrs. Wallace."
On the seventh day, while God was creating black widow spiders and rattle snakes, Mrs. Wallace redecorated the master bedroom. She painted the walls pink with a flower border. She put a shag carpet over the hardwood floors. Then she threw God's Monopoly Game in the recycling bin.
On the eighth day, God created Earth and placed it in The Moment. He tuned the human time lobe to slow motion, took away their ability to sense The Moment, and then booked a slow train to the past-future and locked the Wallaces in the refrigerator car. "Here, don't forget the Holy Book."
"A book!" said Mrs. Wallace; how fucking retro. Is there a DVD in the back? Did you invent the world wide web yet? How will I instant message my friends? Hey! Did you create friends? Because I'm not leaving here with that silly bastard. I'd rather be dead, whatever that means."
On the ninth day, God said "I'll fix that bitch." He invented millions of other guests and he called them Hu Mans. He made two kinds, Wo Mans, and Male Mans. He gave Male Mans a penis in his own image, and to the Wo Mans he said "Tough Shit." Then God invented death. "Ha!" he said, "Take that you ungrateful bitch."
On the tenth day, after the Wallaces had been shipped to Earth, God rested and had a Pepsi. "Hey", he said, "life is good."